Sugar Coated
by S.Walden
Summary: The story behind the red coats. One-shot / no pairing.


**Sugar Coated**

_Rating: General_

_Pairing: None_

_Summary: The story behind the red coats._

The night was cold, the air seeping in through the floorboards. The boys were sitting anxiously next to their mother, waiting for her to say something, anything to cover up the sound of her dying breaths. There had to be something that could be done. There had to be a cure. Couldn't there be a way for alchemy to pull the disease from her body?

The clock kept ticking and nothing was getting done. Ed grew more agitated with each passing second, with each howl of the wind. He focused on his mother's pale face, color drained from death drawing close. Even her hair looked gray, her eyes fading. Her hand felt light in his. Finally, she spoke to them, told them about the money. Ed didn't care. His mom would be with him and he wouldn't need it. She would take care of them forever.

"Edward, make Mommy a ring of flowers… like your father used to."

Ed twitched as his mother's hand fell limp. "Mom."

Al was silent for a moment but tears flowed uncontrollably after that. Soon, it was just Ed's repeated screaming at his mother to wake up and Al's sobbing. When they settled down, realizing what had happened, the numbness set in.

"Come on boys," Aunt Pinako urged, "You shouldn't linger here any longer. There's a proper time and place for grieving."

Al ran up to her and stuffed his face into her apron as he had done time and again with his mother. He could accept Pinako's urgency to get things managed quickly and in a healthy manner, but Ed couldn't. He felt he would break his mother's hand if he held it any closer. No more tears would settle between her knuckles, so they trickled down and eventually fell from her elbow. "Mom. Mom."

"Edward," Winry started, but Pinako silenced her gently.

"Edward," Pinako said. "Let's make those flowers for your mother."

"Screw you old hag," Edward remarked, "I'm not gonna sit around and make flowers while Mom's…"

Pinako was silent. She walked into the room, halfway between Trisha's resting body and the door. "Your mother would want you to. She asked you to."

"Because it reminded her of him! That bastard!"

"Edward," Winry remarked.

"If he had come home, she wouldn't be dead! If I ever see him," Ed stood. "If I ever see him, I'll kill him with these two hands of mine." And then, inaudibly, "Slow, so he suffers like he made her suffer."

"Now that you've blamed someone, will you help your brother?" Winry asked. She was angry, but she laughed because Alphonse's flower s looked more like tentacle monsters than cute crowns or wreaths.

"Yeah," Ed said, wiping his eyes. "I love you, Mom."

After the funeral, there wasn't much to do for the boys. They needed to clean the house. It had been a full three days and dishes were still in the sink, laundry was still flapping in the wind out back, and her room had remained closed.

Ed stared up at the door slightly. Normally, he hadn't been allowed in, especially when their father had been around. He could barely stand to hold the handle, so Al helped. They opened the door together.

There were two coats sitting on some mannequins. Ed had to hold up a candle, freshly lit, to see. The window was already covered in dust and the clouds outside hadn't stopped rolling in so much so that the area was in danger of flooding. Pinako told them they needed to go through their mother's belongings and decide what they wanted to keep. It was a big step in them moving forward and Winry said it had helped her.

The coats were both red with a pretty symbol on the back. One was slightly longer than the other. "Mom holed up in her room a lot towards the end," Al noted, "This, was she working on these?"

"For winter. Coats for us." Ed grabbed the larger one and threw it on. The garment had to be twice his size. "I guess for us to grow into." He didn't want to, but he found himself laughing anyway. "Mom always thought about us, Alphonse."

Alphonse grabbed his own. It fit him a little better, but it was still too big. The hood hung over his eyes. "Brother, we're keeping these right?"

"Yeah, of course," Ed replied, "Look at them. You can see a blood stain here… she hand sewed this with her last bit of life." He cuddled the coat up to his cheek. "I can't wait to grow into it. I'm gonna wear it now anyway."

"Brother, if you drank your milk you might get taller faster," Al replied. "Like me! I'm catching up to you!"

"Screw that icky stuff," Ed remarked, waltzing across the room. The coat tails trailed almost like a wedding gown behind him and the hood sagged to his waist, but he didn't care. He rolled up the sleeves and announced, "Al, we gotta clean this place up. We'll need to if we're gonna bring Mom back and show her how tall we've grown by then."

Al was unsure about this. He set his coat on the bed and the two boys left the room, never to return again.

A/N: Sorry this ends sort of abruptly. I didn't really know what else to add for this simple one-shot, except to leave you all with that foreboding of what will happen. ^o^


End file.
